


Third Heart

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Nightrunner Series - Lynn Flewelling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bathing/Washing, Hair Washing, Healing Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Mind Rape, Implied/Referenced Torture, Light Bondage, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:52:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wounds in Seregil’s soul have barely begun to heal when it becomes clear that those in Alec’s still fester. <i>Talímenios</i> drives both of them to want more than Alec can yet bear. After another year of adventure, danger, and rough living, Seregil may have found a way for them to fully consummate the bond — if it doesn’t immerse him in painful memories of his treacherous first lover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Heart

**Author's Note:**

> **Content note:** Alec is 17 or just shy of it when this fic begins; by the end of it he’s 18. In canon, 16-year-olds are considered sexually “of age.” Therefore I chose not to warn for “Underage,” but please bear the above in mind if the subject is a sensitive one for you.
> 
>  **EDIT:** This story takes place between the events of _Stalking Darkness_ and those of _Traitor’s Moon_. However, since posting the fic I've read _Traitor’s Moon_ and have started _Shadows Return_ , and I have stumbled across revelations that are at odds with a plot point in this fic. Therefore I've added the tag "Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence."
> 
> The other divergence from canon is the the considerably greater extent of Alec’s PTSD. I’ve chosen to narrowly interpret what he tells Seregil, Nysander, and Micum about his treatment at the hands of the Plenimarans. He says, “What she [Irtuk Beshar] did to me, and to Thero—I don’t even know how to tell you.” Beyond that, Flewelling’s prose in that regard is terse. While I love the books, and I realize that different people process trauma differently, I found Alec’s complete and quick recovery from weeks of vicious psychological torture — some of it sexualized — just a _bit_ hard to believe.
> 
> Thanks to [Sineala](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/) for looking the fic over.

Alec lay on his side facing the wall, huddled into himself. Not three minutes before he had been clinging tightly to Seregil, his breath quick and his lips against his beloved’s throat, an unmistakable hardness under the cloth of his trousers pressing into Seregil’s thigh.

Seregil, with a soft groan, had thrown caution to the winds by reaching down and cupping him through the fabric. Alec had frozen in his arms, the flush of desire draining from his cheeks. The demanding protrusion had dwindled and softened beneath Seregil’s palm.

And then Alec had pulled away, whimpering, “I… I can’t.”

Seregil made no reply. His ardor was dashed as well, but he didn’t give a damn about that right now. He wanted nothing more than to pull Alec back into his arms and hold him. He feared that if he so much as stroked the honey-gold hair in reassurance, Alec’s muscles would continue to tighten until he had rolled himself into a ball.

“I’m so sorry, _talí_ ,” came the miserable whisper.

“You have nothing to be sorry _for_ ,” Seregil whispered in reply. “Illior knows, you’ve borne your scars with more grace than I’ve borne mine.” This time he did reach out and brush his fingers against the spill of hair over Alec’s shoulders. Alec didn’t flinch, but neither did he relax into the touch.

Silent, gravid moments passed. A bird warbled in the branches outside the window of their small tavern room, the song too sweet for mid-autumn in western Mycena. _Why have you not yet flown south?_ Seregil wondered. _Are you an exile, like me?_

The scene had played out half a dozen times in the weeks since Alec had found him by the pond at Watermead. Moments after he’d purged himself of dead-souled despair in an abandoned fit of weeping, the feel of Alec’s lips against his, Alec’s lithe body fitting itself to his own, seemed to send all the color and scents and songs of the world rushing back into place.

But that night, in the Cavishes’ guest bedchamber, the mad flurry of stroking hands and urgent mouths and legs seeking to entangle with legs ended abruptly when Alec uttered a cry as far from ecstatic as Seregil could imagine. His face whitened, his pupils shrank from saucers to pinpoints — Bilairy’s Balls, he looked _terrified_ of Seregil, and a heart that had only begun to mend broke afresh. Seregil could almost feel the new cracks spiraling through it as Alec sobbed against the mattress, helpless and humiliated, and told him the last of it.

The worst of it.

All summer long he had watched Alec smile and dote upon the Cavish children and grow lean-muscled and golden as he worked in the sun. And he had envied Alec what seemed to have been a speedy and thorough recovery.

He had been, not for the first time in his life, a colossal fool.

He wished for the thousandth time he had simply grieved Nysander, simply let himself reel from the cruelty of having been ordained his executioner, without castigating both Nysander and himself for finishing what the gods had set in motion. That had been a piece of madness for which the Lightbringer held no blame: Neither he nor Nysander had had a choice.

The carrion birds of Plenimar damned well had had a choice. Thousands of choices. Heaps of dead and mutilated bodies testified mutely to the choices they’d made, from the Fens to the Asheks and from Cirna to Mount Kythes. As did the ashes, long gone cold, in a charred cellar hole in Rhíminee.

Certain things the Plenimarans had done to him, Alec had related either tersely or not at all to Seregil, Nysander, and Micum. Seregil had never considered pressing him for the details because the ones he’d offered unstintingly were chilling enough. Their lies that Seregil had abandoned him. Their taunts of how he would die: an axe to the chest, his beating heart ripped out of him. The apparition of poor Cilla, cursing him for the slaughter of her and her kin. And, worst of all, the illusion of Seregil being slain before Alec’s eyes, reproach and contempt for Alec’s alleged betrayal glaring from his own eyes before they went vacant and dull.

But, as Seregil learned in the fragile peace of Watermead, there was much, much more to be said of the torments wrought by Lord Mardus. Or by Vargûl Ashnazai. Or — _Aura Elustri málreil_ — by Irtuk Beshar.

Bile scorched the back of his throat in the wake of Alec's final revelations. He thought of the blackened hands of Tikárie Megraesh, wriggling like malignant spiders in their glass case at Orëska House. He remembered Alec watching them in horror and revulsion, then his own glee as he lightly drew his finger down Alec’s spine and the boy nearly leapt through the ceiling.

A puerile prank, one that had been played on every new apprentice or visitor since the _dyrmagnos_ ’s hands had been brought there. He had never imagined such a pair of decaying hands creeping and fondling their way over a thaumaturgically restrained naked body in an obscene parody of lovemaking, their owner forcing her way into the mind of her victim like the engorged cock of a rapist into tight, resisting flesh.

The joys of simple labor, savory food, a lilting song, a witty jest, the capering of otters, a twirl around the parlor floor with a delighted six-year-old: All these had come back to Alec in more than good time. But not, it seemed, the sensuous pleasures. Months later, they were still soiled for him by the ghosts of flaking, leathery fingers scrabbling between his legs and a moldy tongue thrust into his mouth. And by the ghost of a necromancer’s still-living hand, stroking him from the hollow of his throat down his breastbone to intimate the gruesome death that awaited him.

Seregil didn’t push, never initiated. Let Alec approach him a thousand times with hunger in his evening-blue eyes, kiss him and caress him and whisper, “I want you, _talí,_ ” before the haunted memories rose as if tripwired and the boy drew back in terror and shame. He knew it wasn’t merely lust driving Alec, or the desire to please Seregil. It was the promise of the _talímenios_ bond, calling out for consummation. How could anyone stand on the edge of such a profound union of body and mind and soul and not try to leap straight into it?

But it hurt him to see Alec reach out for the delights of the flesh — his modest Dalnan, who’d once thought nearly all such delights an offense to the Maker — only to retreat when the wounds in his soul bled anew. Even without the incipient _talímenios_ between them, Seregil would have ached at the sight. But, now, he could feel the nauseating touch of rotting hands on his own skin and smell the icy fetor of the _dyrmagnos_ ’s breath on his own face.

And he could feel, within his own body, Alec shrinking in on himself. How the senses, once so horrifically abused, could misapprehend the most loving of touches as the most rapacious of invasions.

Ah, well. They had all their long ‘faie lives before them, and a bond that, though as yet unbrought to full fruition, beat hard between them like a third heart. And, _Aura Elustri_ , after his own months of emotional deadness — not to mention scaring the living hell out of Alec and their friends — the least Seregil could do was show a little patience. Besides, he still had two good hands.

He could wait.

 

Most of their nights were taken up with work, but not nightrunning in service to the Queen, as Alec had suggested. Not only did Seregil never want to set foot in Rhíminee again, he wanted shut of Skala in its entirety for a very long time. And that included Army camps outside its borders and the sight of green tabards and officers’ gorgets. He wasn’t even sure, he thought guiltily, he could bear to see Beka Cavish in the lieutenant’s uniform he’d helped her attain. Fortunately, war or no war, there was always work for spies, and there were always delicate jobs requiring light fingers, a cat-like tread, and discretion.

Less dangerously, there was always harping and singing in taverns, occasionally in the homes of the wealthy. Seregil’s fingers had come to know the harp Alec had bought him in Nanta as well as they’d come to know the bodies of his lovers. His tenor was as rich and lilting as ever, and Alec’s own light, still-boyish singing voice had much improved since their early days together. Their listeners, whether mud-spattered laborers in dubious taverns or lords of manors on sprawling lands, showered them as extravagantly with coins and jewels as they could afford.

They sang together whenever they could: when they traveled without need for the cover of silence, when they sat by a fire together, when there was physical labor to be done. If Seregil’s hands were free, he put them to the harp. Not only did it pass the time and sharpen their skills, but it salved their hearts: The healing properties of music surpassed those of the most formidable drysians. No matter that Alec’s heart might need considerably more than salve.

A Rhíminee poet of three generations past, one whose verse veered between cutting satire and heart-deep observations, once wrote that lovemaking was a paltry substitute for music, dance, and song. The first time Seregil had read that couplet, years before meeting Alec, he had grinned at the witticism. Now, unable to make love to the only one in the world he truly wanted, he chose to see it as an ironic truth from which to take solace.

Alec had continued to initiate, then retreat, all the previous winter and well past the Festival of Flowers. The _talímenios_ , as well as youth and health, drove him forward. The memories of touches hideous beyond description pulled him back.

By the solstice they had found a solution of sorts: each bringing himself release by hand as the other watched with eyes hot and dark. All the while they touched only to kiss, or to run gentle fingers through tousled hair or down a flushed cheek. It was as awkward as it was erotic at first, especially for Alec; his face burned as red as his cock while he stroked himself under Seregil’s hungry gaze. Still, it fed the bond between them. And, even had it not been for the _talímenios_ , their solution would have been far better than the frustration and heartache and guilt that had gone before.

They spent a full three seasons traversing Mycena — from the Inner Sea to the Folcwine Forest and from Isil to the fringes of the Plenimaran host — singing, spying, laboring, thieving, and pleasuring one another as best they were able. Then their old companion, trouble, found them again.

It should have been an easy, straightforward burglary. The influential Nantan merchant whose papers they’d been hired to lift was supposedly away up in Wolde, making questionable deals with Plenimaran sutlers. To that end, the client who wanted blackmail material on him had been woefully misinformed. What’s more, the merchant himself had been a spy in his younger days, and he had retained his habits of treading silently and keeping lights extinguished unless absolutely necessary, so that he might not be heard or seen until he wished it.

Worst of all, his pretty and equally cat-footed mistress, walking into the suddenly candlelit bedchamber behind the merchant, pointed an accusatory finger at Seregil and cried, “I’ve _seen_ that man before, harping at the Golden Cowrie, more than once! His name is Telven Clarion!”

Seregil, caught with the papers in his hand, had one fragment of good fortune left: He was standing by the open casement. Without thinking he put his other hand to the sill and leapt over it, aiming for and crashing into a rosebush below. Better a hundred thorns in his skin than a broken back — or the gallows, a common fate for thieves in Mycena. The papers went flying, landing everywhere from the bedchamber carpet to the grass beside the rosebush.

Alec, who’d heard the shouts above, wasted no time in hauling him to his feet. They tore through the streets of Nanta, ducking the city watch and the Plenimaran press gangs alike, before gaining the rear court of the inn where they’d been staying. Alec ran to get the horses. Seregil, stinging all over from the rosethorns and his heart pounding like a hammer on an anvil, scaled the wall, pried open the window to their room, seized the bare necessities, and descended again. Five seconds later he swung up on Cynril, and they rode as if chased by a turma of _dra’gorgos_ , barely ahead of the bluecoats.

The arm of the Nanta City Watch didn’t extend throughout all of Mycena, but arm of the merchant certainly did. The narrow escape from Nanta was the beginning of a desperate, exhausting ten-day flight westward, occasionally marked by the sounds of hooves and hounds in pursuit of them. They spent most of it in forests, leading and hiding the horses, sleeping in ditches and in the hollows of fallen trees, and living off wild plants and the small game Alec took down with the Black Radly. Thank the Lightbringer it was high summer.

“Where in the name of all the gods are we _going?_ ” Alec panted one afternoon while they were pelting across an open plain, silently praying they went unseen.

“Back to the Skalan territories,” Seregil said grimly, leaning forward over Cynril and digging his heels into her. He hated to drive a mount so hard, but they’d no choice in the matter just now. “That canny bastard’s interests are in Mycena and Plenimar, not Skala. And he’s got enough of a reputation for his dealings that I doubt he’ll want to have to explain himself to the border guards.”

Alec’s dark-gold brows lifted slightly, but he said nothing more as he hunched down over Windrunner to keep pace.

By the time they reached the border town of Isil, their pursuers were reasonably far enough behind them. Seregil drew up at a vacant pasture near a stream and gestured for Alec to follow suit. There, he took a bundle from Cynril that he’d acquired the day before, turned the elegant Aurënfaie beasts loose to graze and drink, and walked to the water’s edge downstream of them.

“A bath?” Alec asked.

“A bath and a change of clothes,” Seregil said with a wry grin that Alec didn’t seem to like the look of. Wait until the boy found out _why_ he was grinning.

The bundle contained, among other things, a ball of harsh kitchen soap and a large, rough expanse of linen. Once they were clean, they scrambled back onto the bank, and Alec began to dry himself off as Seregil rummaged in the bundle again. Hefting a long garment into his arms, he called to Alec, “Catch!” and loosed it into the air.

Alec caught it in one smooth motion. Then he shook it out before him, and his eyes went wide.

“Seregil. This looks like a drysian robe. Do you mean to tell me you’ve stolen _drysian robes?_ ”

“No, _talí,_ I _borrowed_ them, from that temple we passed yesterday. Along with these.” From Seregil’s fingers dangled two lanyards, each weighted down by a bronze pendant: a serpent, twined into the lemniscate that represented the infinity of Dalna’s creation.

Alec turned whiter than the cursed quartz at Mount Kythes. “We can’t wear those! That’s sacrilege!”

Seregil uttered the sigh of the long-patient in the face of foolish obduracy. “I am sure your Maker will forgive us for donning them in an effort to save our own skins. When we’re in less danger and can take our time, we’ll return them to another temple. And we can speed his forgiveness along with a bit of gold or perhaps a jewel for their altar. The temple we’ll be passing could certainly use it.”

“ _Stolen_ gold or jewel, no doubt,” Alec muttered. Seregil arched one brow; the boy had become almost as accomplished a thief as he himself was. But he knew the idea of theft itself wasn’t what troubled his beloved.

“Well, yes, and stolen from whom? Some wastrel who’d only lose it in a gaming house, or a girl with more than enough ornaments in her jewelry casket already. The drysians can make much better use of those riches. Put the robe on, Alec. And the pendant.”

Alec shot him the one of the darkest looks Seregil had ever seen him muster outside of Plenimar. But he obeyed. “I suppose you robbed the temple of a pair of staves, too?” he asked from between clenched teeth as he belted the robe around his waist.

Seregil made a noise that was half amused scorn, half fearful respect. “No. Drysian robes and pendants aren’t magicked. Drysian staves are another thing altogether. I’ll find a suitable branch in the woods and whittle it down with your knife.”

“Just one branch?”

“Of course.” He smiled broadly. “As my acolyte, you’re too new and inexperienced to have earned your own staff yet.”

 

“Halt,” the soldier in the green tabard barked. “State your names and your business in the territories.”

Seregil, hair bound tightly back under the hood of the robe, sat up straight on Cynril to lend himself the illusion of greater height and lifted his chin to display the glint of bronze at his throat. Assuming the air of authority helped dampen his surprisingly sharp pang at the sight of the Skalan Army uniform. He was gratified to see the soldier’s eyes widen slightly in respect. Luckily she didn’t seem to wonder why a pair of simple drysians would be astride such fine mounts.

“I am Prosperian, and this is my acolyte Verus,” Seregil said, indicating Alec beside him on Windrunner. Alec, likewise hooded, kept his own expression stern and gave but a slight nod. “We are bound for the village of Two Gulls, whose inhabitants would surely welcome a visit from healers.”

“You may pass,” the soldier said, her voice gentler now as she bowed her head and made a Dalnan sign with her hand. “Maker’s blessing on you both.”

“And on you, daughter,” Seregil said, the sincerity in his own words surprising him.

As the crossing disappeared between them, he leaned over and said to Alec in a low voice, “Two Gulls is a few more days down the coast. We’ll change into plain riding clothes within the hour, as soon as we can find a hiding place. The Four preserve us if we’re dragooned into a request for healing we can’t possibly grant.”

The “harbor” that came into view two days later was considerably smaller than some of the Gedre swimming coves Seregil had frolicked in as a boy, and its waters far less salubrious. Alec looked around without much evident pleasure at the dozen-odd buildings — an inn that had obviously seen better days, a temple of Dalna in the same state of repair, and a wretched cluster of shacks — that sat near the water’s edge. “This is our destination?”

“Not our final one; that’s another three days inland. Care to stop for the night at that sorry excuse for an inn?”

Alec pulled a face. “For dinner, perhaps. I’d as soon as sleep rough until we get to where we’re going. Better midges and gnats than bedbugs and lice, and at least we won’t be charged for them.”

As it turned out, they could have happily missed the meal as well. The mussel stew was gritty, they had to trim mold from the bread, and the cheese was drying out. Even the cherries provided for a dessert were eye-wateringly sour, despite the fruit being in season. But it was all edible, if not palatable. As hungry and tired as they were, it was easier to wash it all down with the watery beer and toss a handful of coppers onto the table than to try to slip out without paying.

As they mounted their horses again, Alec grumbled, “We could’ve stolen better, even in this backwater.”

“Very likely,” Seregil replied, suppressing a smile, as they rode away from the coast in search of a spot where they could lie down undisturbed for the night.

On the morning of the third day out from Two Gulls, the land began to rise in gently rolling hills. It would rise higher and higher until it erupted into the gray peaks of the Nimras. But their destination was not so far: That evening they stopped Windrunner and Cynril at the lip of a rich green valley. In it nestled a hamlet even tinier than the one they’d just left, if not as run down. Most of what lay below them was hillside pasture for sheep and cattle, with a cottage or hut here and there. Insofar as the little place could be said to have a center, it was a small shrine to the Four, more or less a consecrated lean-to.

As they stood in its scant shelter, Alec bowed his head and closed his eyes, no doubt begging forgiveness for their blasphemous disguises. Before they’d departed Two Gulls, Seregil had left their purloined robes and pendants at the back step of the ramshackle temple, bundled into the dry linen sheet with the promised bit of gold. Now he set a pearl down on the shrine altar, between a bouquet of fading wildflowers and a small, rain-soaked sack of grain that had likely begun to sprout.

 _Chypta, Aura Elustri._ Let Alec think it was propitiation to Dalna.

Behind the cottage furthest away from the shrine towered an dead oak with a lightning-charred trunk, its bare branches making dark stripes against the pink and orange sky. Seregil rode for it, Alec following. A trail beyond the tree wound upward among dense forest that required them to dismount and lead the horses through it. After a good half mile, they found themselves at the edge of a high meadow crossed by a silver-blue band of chuckling water. On the far side of it stood a little house built of oak logs; behind the house were a tumbledown byre and a small corral.

“Welcome home, _talí_ ,” Seregil said.

 

It took them a few weeks to settle in. Alec did so with a sense of trepidation, wondering aloud whether the house’s rightful owner might appear at the door at any minute, much like the angry merchant they’d fled.

“There is no ‘rightful owner.’ You did note the two inches of dust that covered everything in the place before we cleared it away, didn’t you, and the fleas in the mattress straw?”

“Of course I did,” Alec snapped, indignant. They’d slept on the ground outside the house that first night; the next day’s tasks had included cleaning and restuffing the mattress tick and strewing the house with pennyroyal.

Seregil glanced at him with one brow lifted. “The question was rhetorical, Alec. I wasn’t slighting your powers of observation.”

With a sigh, Alec passed his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry. I realized that as soon as the words left my mouth.”

“It’s fine, _talí_. To answer your question: Whoever last lived here is dead, or was struck by wanderlust, or had to flee for one reason or another. There are tiny houses like this throughout the foothills of the Nirmas and into the mountains themselves, up to the Fishless Sea and nearly down to the Asheks. Up in the Ironhearts, too; I’m surprised you never heard about that, back in Kerry.”

“But … why would they stand vacant for long, if nobody owns them? This house may not be the one on Wheel Street, but it’s perfectly serviceable shelter.”

Seregil didn’t flinch. Wheel Street was among the places he’d sworn he’d never see again. But it was a place he would never have missed in any case. Its memory didn’t carry the same heart-jolting freight as that of Orëska House. Or of the Cockerel.

“Because one can’t pack a house onto one’s horse or back if one can’t sell it. Mountain clans live communally in large, dry caverns that outsiders are unlikely to find. Lowlanders don’t buy property with soil too thin to farm, as mountain soil usually is. Rich city dwellers who want to play lord of the manor are disinclined to do so in a remote place where they’d have to do all the work themselves, common folk being sparse and preferring to live hard than to enter service. And houses like this are easily thrown together, anyway. If one isn’t minded to stay, why not simply leave it open to whoever next has need of it and can maintain it, until they themselves move on and leave it for yet another?”

Alec seemed to accept the explanation in dubious silence. But, after that exchange, his hesitancy rapidly began to fade. As summer wound to its hot, golden close, a stranger would have thought he’d lived in that little house all his life.

The gems and gold they still had with them would have drawn unwanted attention in this remote locale. Rather than trade them, they buried them in a metal box under the corral, committing the location to memory. Then they turned their hands to hard, honest labor. They hunted game and cured skins; whatever meat, hide, or fur they didn’t need they traded to the valley folk for other necessities. There were berries, mushrooms, and healing things to be gathered from the woods as well. Closer to home, there was firewood to be split, water to be carried, a garden of winter greens and roots to be started, clothes and linens to be washed and hung out, and always something or other to be mended.

Alec had been born to such a life; Seregil had taken it up it often enough. If it lacked the intellectual stimulation of lockpicking or of verbal thrust and parry, it kept the body hardy, it produced tangible results, and it left one tired enough to sleep deeply through the night.

At least, when no nightmares came.

They came less and less often to Seregil, but still they came, once or twice a fortnight. The _dra’gorgos_ , the Eye, Orëska House, the blood sacrifices… the Cockerel. And Nysander. _Oh, Illior, Nysander._

And Alec himself, half-starved and half-mad, running naked from him along a rocky shore. Seregil would follow him until there was nowhere else to run. Then Alec would turn, the Black Radly suddenly in his hands and an arrow nocked to it, his teeth bared and his eyes hard as sapphires as he aimed at Seregil’s breast—

Seregil would bolt upright in their broad, low bed, gasping, heart racing, perspiration trickling down his temples even when Kemmin came and the winds began to moan. Alec, who could sleep through a thunderstorm yet come awake at the ominous snap of a twig underfoot, would immediately wrap himself around Seregil, then pull the furs tight about them both. In Aurënfaie — they’d spoken nothing but for weeks, that Alec might come to know it fluently — he’d whisper, “I’m here, _talí_. You were dreaming, but I’m real, and I’m here.”

When Seregil had ceased to shudder, Alec would ease the two of them back down to the bed and begin to sing softly to him, his songs slow and gentle ones of true lovers and the devotion between them. In his arms, Seregil would fall into dreamless, restful sleep, and Alec would soon follow.

One night, just as Seregil had laid his head down once more, Alec leaned over him. Just enough moonlight passed through the oiled parchments over the windows for Seregil to catch the glint in his eye as he whispered, “I don’t want to sing you to sleep tonight, _talí_. I’d rather kiss you awake instead.”

Seregil’s eyes widened. He felt himself stir at Alec’s words, and stir yet more at the touch of Alec’s lips on his.

Exhaustion, terror, and filth not being conducive to the pleasures of the body, they had abandoned even the thought thereof during the wild flight from Nanta to Isil to Two Gulls to their new home. Once they were clean, well rested, and safe, the _talímenios_ began to beckon them once more.

Touching themselves while barely touching one another had sufficed for a long time. Now, Seregil realized as he slid his tongue into Alec’s mouth and drove his fingers into fine, pale hair, it wouldn’t suffice anymore. Not for him, and not for Alec.

When the kiss ended, Alec pressed his face into the crook of Seregil’s neck. Their breaths came quickly, and both their heartbeats thumped in Seregil’s ear, but neither of them spoke, and they lay still against one another for a while. Seregil could feel, under his own skin, the tension under Alec’s, fervent desire contending with cold fear.

An idea had taken shape in his mind days before, but he hadn’t yet found an occasion to voice it. Now seemed to be that occasion.

“ _Talí_ … I have an suggestion. I don’t know if you would find it enticing or alarming, but there is no way to know without asking you.”

“Then out with it,” Alec said, his voice muffled against Seregil’s throat.

Seregil’s arm tightened around him. “Alec, if I were to let you touch me, to … take me, without my once touching you, would the wounds to your mind permit it?”

Alec didn’t reply at first, but neither did he stiffen with trepidation as Seregil had worried he would. He seemed to be mulling the idea over.

Finally he said, “… Perhaps?” His fingers were lightly stroking the other side of Seregil’s neck now, a touch that went straight to Seregil’s cock. “I would need you to tell me what to do. And… would you be able to restrain yourself from touching me?”

It had been said so utterly without boast that Seregil had to smile. “I might not. I might completely forget myself and wish to run my hands all over you. But… _you_ could restrain me.”

He could almost feel the frown against his neck. “How? Wouldn’t my hands be… busy?”

The smile became a chuckle. “Have you never heard of ropes, Alec?”

Alec pulled away roughly and stared at him, mouth agape. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Seregil would have wagered a cask of fine Zengati wine that his beloved’s face was as red as a ruby. “What?”

“Oh, come now, we’ve visited a few brothels in our time. You never stole a glimpse into any of the specially equipped rooms, the ones they put at the back of the house so that the occasional scream won’t reach the front parlor? You never saw patrons leave those rooms, buttoning their cuffs over the ligature marks on their wrists?”

“I— I’ve heard a few people speak of such things. I don’t understand why anyone would _do_ them,” Alec huffed rather primly.

“Because, _talí_ , power stirs the blood, whether one’s own power or that of another. And then there are those who are roused by pain, but that’s another matter altogether. So long as it’s all just in play, it’s a far more harmless game than, say, that between Skala and Plenimar. Or many of the games you and I have played with others, for that matter.”

Alec, sitting up with his arms around his knees, stared down at him. “Is it a game _you’ve_ played in the past?” He sounded a shade reproachful, though mostly bewildered.

“Yes. But not often, and not in many years.”

“Were you… the binder, or the bound?”

Seregil, who had propped himself up on one elbow, grinned wolfishly up at him. “Both, at different times. I enjoyed it well enough, but once my curiosity was sated it lost its hold on my imagination.”

His grin softened into a smile, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “I offer the idea up to you not because I wish to play games of power with you. I want to be with you, Alec, to be as close to you as I possibly can. I’ve wanted to be inside you for so, so long. But your mind hasn’t healed enough for that. So… I want _you_ inside _me_. And I want to be as unable as possible to do anything that might panic you.”

Alec caught his breath and turned his face slightly away. Seregil could see the faint flash of his teeth in his upper lip. He wanted to take Alec’s wrist between his fingers just to feel the pulse under the fine skin that he knew was beating like a triphammer.

Instead he curled his hand around the ankle nearer to him. “ _Talí_? What say you? Or do you need to think on it some more?”

Dragging in a deep breath, Alec faced him again.

“Tomorrow evening. After we’ve eaten and bathed.”

“Tomorrow evening,” Seregil echoed. Now he did take Alec’s hand in his, to press a kiss to the back of it. It trembled, a tremor that passed through all of Alec’s body, and Seregil found his throat tight with want. But there was no need to speak again until morning, not with Alec sliding down against him and wrapping him in a cocoon of warm furs and warmer flesh.

 

In the light of day, the idea no longer merely in his head but out in the open between the two of them, Seregil began to feel trepidation himself.

Not of Alec. Illior’s Fingers, never of Alec. Nor of being bound, in and of itself. Those who’d done so to him in the past had all been lovers he trusted implicitly. And there was no bond of trust like that of the _talímenios_.

What gave him pause was that he had not been entered in more than forty years. And the last man to have done so—

He cut the thought short, leaned over, and spat hard on the ground.

For the first year of his exile, he hadn’t wanted to lie with anyone at all, not even courtesans. Even had he trusted anyone to touch him intimately so soon after his passion had been forged by deceit into a deadly weapon — against another man, against his own clan, against himself — his anger and despair would have driven any lover away before long. Failure after failure at the Palace in Rhíminee didn’t make his moods any sweeter. Especially the failure with Nysander.

Then he’d left the city and begun to find his true talents, besides the music and swordsmanship at which he’d always excelled. As he’d come into his own, without painful reminders of past disasters on every corner, he’d reawakened. He’d taken lovers, many of them, the first of many more. And why not? He was still quite young, especially for Aurënfaie. What had befallen him was his own damned fault, but he’d suffered for it; didn’t he deserve at least _some_ pleasure? Besides, one could learn more in bed than in a council chamber, and those with reputations as skilled lovers learned the most.

But, just as he would let no one at all inside his mind, he let no one at all inside his body. Unless one counted his mouth, and Seregil didn’t. He lied to his male lovers that playing the receptive role simply didn’t please him, and they thought nothing of it.

In truth, it had pleased him a great deal. It had left him shouting and shuddering in Ilar’s arms as the world melted around them and sprang up anew.

He knew it wasn’t rational. To encompass was no more inherently intimate than to penetrate, nor did it necessarily make one more vulnerable. Had he been the one to fuck Ilar, rather than the other way around, he rather doubted he’d later have caviled to stick his cock into every willing man or woman he encountered. Ah, well, he’d never claimed to be a slave to reason.

What would it be like with Alec inside him? Was the _talímenios_ strong enough to scour away all traces of the betrayal that he’d come to associate with the act of welcoming another into himself?

He shook his head sharply, sending his thoughts scattering, and came back to the present. This morning he had been sitting on a tree stump, sharpening and polishing knives and daggers while Alec was off hunting. The pile of blades beside him, and the one currently in his lap, looked as strange to him as if he’d never seen a knife before. Smiling ruefully, he shook his head again.

His modest Dalnan being gone for the moment, he decided the best way to occupy his mind was by singing the most scabrous ballad he knew, a relatively new one called “The Plenimaran Marine” that had been making the rounds in Mycena and Skala all year. One might hear different verses in every tavern and town, as was often the case with such a ballad. Altogether, Seregil had heard and memorized thirty verses — even written a few himself, though he’d never sung the song for pay. No matter the version, each verse was fouler than the one before.

He was somewhere around the thirteenth, the one involving the title character’s unnatural love for various and sundry creatures of the deep, when he heard twigs crackling lightly underfoot. Naturally, he pretended not to have heard and sang all the louder.

 _“Seregil!”_ Alec sounded positively scandalized.

“I’m merely keeping up my singing skills!” Seregil protested, all feigned innocence. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to hear the verse about the cargo hold full of sheep with beautiful long lashes and the softest of wool? Or the one about the Benshâl courtesan with the glass eye who kept the socket behind it well oiled for our dear marine?”

“I’ll pass, thank you,” Alec muttered.

Seregil’s laughter followed him into the house. “I don’t think we’ll need to build fires this winter, _talí_. I can just sing to you, and the heat in your face will keep us warm.”

The moment passed, and he was alone again with his apprehension. He was used to Alec being the nervous one. Of course, Alec’s nerves were on edge, too, for reasons of his own. But Seregil for once couldn’t take advantage of it by teasing him, erotically or otherwise. _We’re like a couple of skittish virgins_ , he thought sourly.

He threw himself into the care of the horses for the afternoon. Micum Cavish visited them now and again; he had come the week before leading Patch on a halter rope from his own mount, and he’d left the pony with them. In addition to Patch and the Aurënfaie horses they kept a brindled mare named Tiger’s Eye, whom Alec had picked out at a harvest fair and paid for with coins from their precious hoard. A spindly creature, she’d sold cheaply; her previous owner claimed he could no longer afford her upkeep. Seregil had regarded the purchase as dubious at best, but under Alec’s care the mare’s frame had filled out and her coat had grown glossy. At the spring fair they could sell her at a profit to someone worthy of her.

The early fading of the late-autumn light soon made outdoor work impossible. As he strode in out of the rapidly chilling air, Seregil let the smell wafting from the hearth — hare roasted with wild thyme — distract him from the thoughts he’d been trying to keep at bay all afternoon.

Alec had pulled the rickety table from its spot by the bed to just in front of the fire and arranged a crate on either side for a seat. Then he’d set the table with the chipped plates, worn bone cups, and cheap tarnished forks with which they took their meals. “We’ll have to get silver snail forks and porcelain finger bowls to match someday,” Seregil had once quipped.

Tonight the table was lit not with the usual rushlight or tallow candle but a fine taper of beeswax, wedged into the neck of an old bottle. On the plates next to the roast hare were wild greens, as well as an airy bread from a baker down in the valley. The cups, to Seregil’s astonishment, were filled with drink considerably sweeter and headier than their usual beer.

“Alec. This is Zengati wine.”

“So it is,” Alec said, his expression enigmatic behind his cup.

“Where — how did you get this?”

“At the fair, the same day we bought Tiger’s Eye. I bought a skin of it from a wine merchant. I knew you liked it.” The blue gaze slid away diffidently. “It was a bit of an extravagance, I know, and she drove a hard bargain. But we’d been doing well in trade, still are, and I figured we could afford it. And that it would be good to have on hand for… certain occasions.”

“A wise decision,” Seregil said. He raised his cup and sipped again, letting the wine of that hot, distant land set a fire in his belly. He wanted to be sober tonight… mostly. A few drops of liquid warmth in his veins would do no harm.

Alec had bathed before dinner. When it was too cold to do so in the stream, they usually relied on a ewer of hearth-warmed water, a ball of soap, and swaths of linen. Tonight, Alec had poured most of the kettle’s steaming contents into the large oblong metal basin that usually sat upended by the chimney, then mixed in enough water from the rainbarrel that he wouldn’t scald himself. After his bath he’d dragged the basin outdoors and tipped the dirtied water into the withered grass. Now he smelled of soap and green growing things under his clean tunic and trousers; with his back to the fire, his long hair had begun to dry, a few pale strands drifting away from the rest.

Just before Seregil had come in, Alec had filled the kettle once again from another rainbarrel and set it over the fire. As they finished the last bites of dinner, it was steaming again, and Alec smiled softly. “Does my Lord Seregil require a bath attendant this evening?”

“That would be interesting,” Seregil said drily, his tension in abeyance and his tongue a bit looser thanks to the Zengati. “Usually it’s the bather who slips a tip to the attendant afterward, not the other way around.” Once he’d had the wicked satisfaction of seeing Alec’s cheeks flame, he added more gently, “In all seriousness, I should like that very much, _talí_. Especially if you’d like to wash my hair for me.”

The curve of Alec’s lips was so very sweet at that moment, like that of a berry about to tumble from its vine. “Then perhaps you should … prepare for your bath.”

Seregil watched as Alec emptied the kettle into the basin, tempered the steaming bath with rainwater, and tossed in a handful of dried herbs and petals. Then he stood. Not twenty seconds later, all he had been wearing lay in a pile at his feet. Alec’s eyes widened, and the tip of his tongue appeared against his parted lips.

Gray eyes fixed on blue ones, Seregil climbed into the basin and sank down into the water. The scents of fir, sage, chamomile, and lavender spiraled up around him. It had been so long since he’d had a proper bath that the warmth felt as luxurious as silken sheets against his skin. Before he realized it he’d uttered a soft, quiet moan. When he heard a sound that could have been a swallow, he bit his lip and concentrated on drawing the soap ball over his skin.

A few minutes later, as the soap floated on the water, he heard footfalls on the floor behind him. They came to a stop perhaps an inch away.

“Shall I wash your hair for you, my lord?”

“Please,” he replied, throat suddenly tight again.

There was more movement, and the rustle of cloth. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Alec’s tunic and trousers land on the floor a few feet away.

“Fresh clothing. It’d be a shame to get it damp,” Alec murmured. Seregil started slightly at the warm breath against the nape of his neck and the lean-muscled arm that reached around him for the soap.

Alec’s other hand, holding a battered metal cup, was descending into the bathwater. It rose again to disappear above Seregil’s line of sight, and then wet warmth was flowing over the crown of Seregil’s head and trickling down his nape and shoulders.

Alec’s fingers were as strong and clever as his mind. They twined themselves into Seregil’s hair, just over the nape, then moving slowly upward and outward, working lather into his scalp.

Seregil closed his eyes and expelled a tremulous breath. This wasn’t a deliberate slow tease. Alec, his apparent arousal notwithstanding, would have been bewildered by the suggestion that he was offering anything but simple, solicitous care. But sparks danced on Seregil’s wet skin as if the boy’s fingertips were striking them against his scalp, and he was hard, so hard, under the surface of the water.

Alec’s hands descended to work the lather through the fall of Seregil’s hair past his shoulders. They’d both let their hands grow rough in the last several months, as there was no longer a reason not to. The callused edge of a finger brushed against the skin between Seregil’s shoulder blades, and this time he couldn’t repress a shudder.

Up rose the metal cup once more. The water that spilled over him was cloudier now, more tepid, but it would do well enough. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the feel of Alec working the suds out of his hair.

Alec’s fingertips came to the very ends of it. They hovered there for perhaps a second before they separated, then came to rest on either side of Seregil’s ribcage. Alec leaned forward and pressed his lips to the side of Seregil’s neck.

Seregil moaned again, turned his own head, and met Alec’s lips roughly. Under his damp arm, the skin of Alec’s back was as hot and dry as if with fever.

“You’re going to get me wet again,” Alec gasped between kisses.

“Not until much later,” Seregil growled in reply before taking one earlobe between his teeth and giving it a sharp nip. Alec was the one to moan now, and Seregil felt himself throb in response.

As they rose together, Alec grabbed up a long expanse of linen. Seregil dried himself hastily as he stepped over the rim, leaving wet footprints on the rough wooden floorboards. Then the linen was on the floor as well, and the two of them were clutching at one another, kissing, swaying, cocks pressing hard into one another’s bellies.

Seregil kept his arms around his lover’s shoulders as Alec began to walk him backward. When he felt the edge of the bed against the backs of his knees, he released Alec entirely and sat. Then he swung his legs up and lay on his back, limbs pale against the dark-gray wolfskin covering the bed and outstretched in surrender.

He noticed, as he hadn’t before, the ends of ropes snaking up from the corners of the bed behind his head onto the wolfskin. Earlier in the day he had told Alec to secure them around the upper legs of the bed’s platform. Looking to one of the sitting crates that remained by the side of the bed, he noted with approval that Alec had laid out the other necessities: a small jar, and next to it his dagger.

The boy was sitting on the edge of the bed now, smoothing Seregil’s damp hair with his palm. “Are you sure this is what you want, _talí_?” His voice was hoarse, nerves and desire flickering in his eyes.

“Very sure,” Seregil whispered, fighting the instinct to reach out and return the caress. Let it all rest in Alec’s hands tonight.

He kept his own hands still and unmoving as Alec attended to his left wrist. The rope was coarse, the fibers abrading him, although Alec was careful not to knot it too tightly. The point wasn’t to create bonds that the erstwhile Rhíminee Cat, who had shimmied more than once out of iron manacles, couldn’t escape. It was to provide enough restraint to keep Seregil from _inadvertently_ breaking his promise.

As Alec began to bind the right wrist, Seregil’s heart began to pound; mostly with desire, but with a lurch of uncertainty to it. It vaguely occurred to him that if his arousal turned to ice or, worse, panic when the moment of union came, he’d have done Alec no favor at all. Or himself, for that matter.

Too late to worry about that now.

Alec, kneeling on the bed at Seregil’s left, had been leaning across him to reach his right wrist. He tied the final knot and straightened, then set one foot onto the floor. His face, in silhouette against the fire, was nonetheless flushed and brilliant. Slowly, almost reverently, he drew his dilated eyes downward over the supine form of his lover, then upward again until they held Seregil’s. Not breaking his gaze, he stretched out full on the bed, pressing body to body, gently lifting Seregil’s jaw with one hand and initiating the most tender kiss Seregil could ever remember being given since— since before he’d left Aurënen.

“You are so beautiful,” Alec whispered, tracing the fine bones of Seregil’s face with his fingertips. “I could just lie here forever and touch you and — and _marvel_ at you. I know the gods brought us together for greater reasons… but, _Aura Elustri_ , sometimes I still can’t believe how fortunate I am.”

Seregil’s throat was tight again, and with more than just desire. This exquisite, pure-hearted, clever creature marveled at _him_ , fancied himself lucky to wake up each morning in the arms of a cursed exile with a selfish streak longer than the Skalan Isthmus and more blood on his hands than there were drops in the Gathwayd Ocean? Even though Alec’s few short years of acquaintance with Seregil had earned his soul more scars than the back of a recalcitrant slave?

He closed his eyes before he could feel the pricking of tears. Let Alec think he swooned with passion. But the fine hair tickling his jawline and the smooth warmth of the cheek against his shoulder told him Alec wasn’t looking at his face anymore. Instead, the boy looked downward at his own hand tracing gentle patterns over his lover’s breast.

Two questing fingertips found a pale, flat nipple and skimmed it lightly, then closed in. Seregil’s breath hitched, and he heard Alec’s catch in response. His touch as deft as if he were nocking an arrow to a bow, Alec stroked the small jut of flesh, watching in apparent fascination as it lengthened and darkened.

“Does that please you, _talí_?” he whispered.

“Can you not tell?” came the breathless response.

Alec made no reply. His fingers drifted to the other nipple, and he turned his head and began to trace patterns with his tongue against Seregil’s neck.

“By the Light!” Seregil realized he was squirming. “I suspect I’ll have to teach you much less than I anticipated.”

Alec’s voice was muffled against him. “Well, a neck is a neck, whether a man’s or a woman’s, and Myrichia liked my mouth on her neck well enough.” He spoke as guilelessly as if Seregil had asked him where he’d learned a new archery technique. “And Ylin—” He stopped abruptly, then continued with a trace of shame in his voice, “Well, there are things I know that please me, and I thought it couldn’t hurt to try them with you.”

 _At least that traitorous bitch did that much for you,_ Seregil thought sardonically. And then Alec’s mouth and fingers chased all thought out of his head. When Alec slid down on the bed and replaced his fingers with his mouth, Seregil began to writhe again.

Alec had arranged himself at an angle from which he could watch Seregil’s expression. The blue eyes were widely dilated, but, for just a split second, Seregil could perceive in them a look of concentration that had become entirely familiar over the last few years. And then, gently but firmly, Alec raked his teeth over the length and tip of the nipple to which he had been attending.

 _“Aura Elustri!”_ With Seregil’s breath socked right out of him, the oath was hard to utter.

Alec’s concentration seemed to dissolve into the dark pools at the centers of his eyes, and the hunger in his face was fierce and naked as he moved upward again. The ensuing kiss was a long and probing one with little finesse, just urgency and wet heat and one hand knotted tightly into Seregil’s hair and the other gripping his shoulder. Alec’s mouth plunged to his again and again after each ragged intake of breath; when it rose a final time, they were both gasping.

Alec lay back down beside him, cheek tucked against the line of Seregil’s jaw, eyes fixed on his as Seregil watched Alec’s arm descend. He sucked in a harsh breath to feel Alec’s fingertips against his cock.

At first, Alec seemed to be less caressing him than exploring him. He had seen Seregil bring himself off any number of times, but never before had he reached out his own hand. Now he drew light, tentative fingers over the smooth, broad head, making Seregil’s hips jerk involuntarily. Two fingertips glided down the shaft, tracing the veins, stroking through fine, sparse dark-brown hair as they descended further. Seregil closed his eyes and uttered a soft, low sound of need as Alec’s palm slid around his balls, cupping them, warming them, fingertips ever so gentle. He drew his knees up and slightly further apart, giving Alec as much access as he could.

His eyes flew open again with a gasp when Alec’s hand curled around his cock and slid firmly down, bringing the foreskin with it, then up again to slip over the wetness that Alec’s fingers had spread over the breadth of his cockhead. “Oh, yes, _talí_ , just like that,” he breathed.

He set his teeth into his lower lip as the curve of Alec’s half-open hand rose and fell again, three more times, four. Then he watched Alec raise it to his own lips, and something like Benshâl fire exploded in his belly as Alec delicately and inquisitively licked at the clear fluid coating his fingertips.

The boy made a slight grimace, and the flames banked a little in the face of amusement, though not so much that Seregil’s voice wasn’t low and rough when he spoke. “You needn’t attempt that this evening. I would much rather demonstrate it another time — with my own mouth on you.”

Alec’s shudder seemed to go through the both of them, and he pressed his flushed face against Seregil’s jawline once more. After a few heartbeats, he whispered, “Are you … should I… ?”

“I am, and you should.” Seregil turned his head to brush a kiss against where Alec’s jaw met his chin.

Shivering still, Alec rose from the bed to take the jar from the crate. Its contents gleamed a pale gold in the firelight as he settled himself back onto the wolfskin between Seregil’s parted legs. He looked up again; the anxiety was back in his eyes. “You _will_ tell me if I’m doing this wrong?”

“Alec, when have I ever failed to tell you that you’re doing something wrong?”

The rhetorical question and Seregil’s wry grin brought back a hint of the sweet smile of earlier. But Alec’s expression remained uneasy as he unscrewed the jar lid. He set the lid down on the floor, rested the jar on his thigh, and, rather gingerly, began to ease his right forefinger and middle finger into the oil.

“Coat your fingers thoroughly,” Seregil said, finding anchorage in the old, familiar role of teacher. “Obviously, drip as little as possible, but the rule is that no matter how much you think you’ll need, you’ll probably need more.”

Nodding again, Alec curled his fingers decisively into the oil. Watching that motion through the jar glass, Seregil felt the ghost of a warm, tugging ache deep inside. He tried not to think of Alec’s fingers curled in him just like that. He suspected it was yet another thing he’d want to demonstrate to Alec, _on_ Alec, himself rather than guide the boy with words alone.

Alec withdrew his glistening fingers and set the jar on the floor beside the lid. Then he looked upward with an expression of awkward bafflement.

“Start with one finger,” Seregil said quietly. “Just… circle the outside for a few moments with your fingertip, then—” He swallowed. “Enter me. Go very slowly and gently at first. When one has not been entered in a very long time, or at all, the flesh needs to adjust to it.”

Coloring again, Alec nodded and lowered his head. Seregil watched the boy’s hand descend between his own splayed thighs. Then he felt the cool, slick touch of a fingertip, and he caught his breath, willing himself to relax, not to tighten.

Round and round Alec circled him, touch as light as if he were testing the surface of an unfamiliar lock. The soft, tickling caress awoke nerves that had slept for decades. Seregil arched his back slightly and whimpered, knees drawing further apart, hips rising, toes curling into the fur of the wolfskin.

Alec raised his eyes to his lover’s face, then lowered them again, before he began to very gently ease the same finger inward. Seregil closed his eyes. It was not inherently pleasurable, in and of itself. He’d remembered that in his mind, but it was another thing to remember it in one’s body.

He forced his mind away from a silken voice in his memory, echoing down the years: _Relax your muscles,_ talí _. Don’t think. Just let me in._ This was not his betrayer who breached him now. This was Alec, who had saved and protected him many times over.

_Son, brother, friend, lover._

“All right?” Alec whispered.

Seregil nodded, eyes opening again. Alec’s finger was about halfway inside him, not moving at all. “You can … enter more,” he said hoarsely. He heard Alec take a deep breath, and then his finger was sliding further in. The feel of it was just on the edge of pleasurable, not quite there. Seregil licked his lips, then looked up at Alec.

“Work it in and out of me. Gently. If you start to feel more friction, add a little more oil using the fingers of your other hand.”

The finger slid in and out twice more before it withdrew. Alec leaned over the edge of the bed, his hands moving beneath Seregil’s line of vision. When the boy righted himself again, the fingers of both hands shone in the light, and he let droplets fall indolently from those of his left hand onto those of his right.

Seregil felt new cold slickness around the invading finger. He flinched, which produced a flicker of concern in Alec’s face. “I’m fine,” Seregil whispered. “The oil’s just chilly.”

Alec nodded, then began to slowly, steadily thrust the finger in and out. Desire meshed with concentration in the boy’s expression. The oil warmed quickly. A feeling of tension began to build within Seregil, one his body was now remembering from so long ago.

“Put a second finger into me, _talí_.”

Alec’s eyes widened, arousal chasing out concentration for a moment before he seemed to gather his wits. With the next thrust came the sensation of being stretched, a faint soreness, mitigated by the coolness of the oil on the second finger. The oil warmed again; the soreness changed to fullness. The tension grew keener, more pleasurable. He let himself be lost in the warm, thrumming flow of it.

“Good?” he heard Alec whisper, and in response he made a low sound of assent. He imagined, again, Alec’s fingers curling upward, seeking and stroking. His cock surged at just the memory of such a caress. It surged again at the unbidden image of Alec’s contorted face, the thought of what sort of high-pitched, needy sounds Alec would make, when Seregil did the same to him…

“Seregil?”

“Mm?”

“How long do I do this for, before…?”

Seregil managed a languid grin. “Don’t tell me you’re tiring already?”

“ _No!_ ” Alec flushed hotly. “I… I want you to be ready. I don’t want to hurt you. But… I want to be able to last for you.” He swallowed audibly. “I don’t know if I can.”

 _Bilairy’s Balls._ Between that revelation and the thoughts Seregil had been entertaining seconds ago, he suddenly wondered whether either of them would last.

“All right. Do you want to… try?” He could see the prominence in Alec’s throat bob as the boy nodded. “More oil, then. On yourself, on me. Err on the side of too much rather than too little. The wolfskin can be cleaned of it later. And start slowly. Let me open to you little by little.”

This time Alec sat at the edge of the bed, rather than leaning over it. He picked up the jar and gathered more oil onto his fingers. Seregil watched his chest rise and fall and his throat work as the newly anointed hand slid over his cock. His fingers dipped into the jar a second time before reaching out to Seregil, and there was more cool slickness, fingertips working as much of it inside him as possible.

Then Alec set the jar back down. Left knee on the bed, right foot on the floor, he turned to face Seregil. The firelight glinted in his hair and ruddied his flesh, throwing the lean muscles of his chest and arms into low relief, gleaming in the oil on his cock. Its angle, how its head curved upward like a flower seeking the sun, bespoke a hardness that, Seregil knew from experience, had to be nearly painful.

He was so beautiful.

“Oh, _Aura Elustri_. Come to me, _talí_.”

Alec seemed to stumble slightly as he hastened to obey. He knelt between Seregil’s thighs, then leaned forward and down, pressing breast to breast and belly to belly. As he steadied himself with a palm splayed warm and firm against Seregil’s shoulder, the other hand moved low between them, arranging, guiding.

And then, there he was: a solid, blunt pressure; a stretch, an ache. Seregil breathed deeply, raising his hips, letting himself open, pushing himself outward—

“Oh, Illior,” Alec whispered. “I— _Oh._ ”

 _Oh,_ indeed. The look on his face, as much that of an acolyte as that of a lover, astounded and humbled by what his senses told him, his mind not quite believing, not yet. Seregil concentrated on not coming just from the sight of it.

He was, as yet, only halfway inside. “Are you all right, Seregil?” he breathed.

“More than all right. Just— just keep going, slowly. I can take all of you in, _talí_. Let me.”

A soft groan from Alec. Pressure, not just where they were joined, but the lean, lithe body pressing full against his, and its warmth. And the stretching, filling ache, diminishing as his flesh relearned what it had long forgotten — and then heat, wet and sharp-edged, traced through him. Oh, Alec, so perfect, even the sweet curve of his cock, skimming him just _there_.

“Maker’s Mercy, _oh_.” The words were Skalan; Aurënfaie seemed to have deserted Alec entirely. “You feel...”

Seregil closed his eyes and tried not to grit his teeth. “Alec… move inside me. Please. Before I lose my mind.”

He could feel the deep breath Alec sucked in before the boy began to ease backward. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his upper teeth digging into his reddened lower lip. Then he pushed forward again, left palm still on Seregil’s shoulder, right palm against the fur. His first several thrusts were clumsy, awkward, until he found a rhythm and his hips seemed to snap into it like metal drawn to a magnet.

His skin, shoulders and chest and back and arms, fairly cried out to be caressed. Forgetting his bonds, Seregil tried to raise his hands, only to feel the ropes bite into his wrists and jerk them backward. He had no taste for pain, nor much anymore for the titillation of restraint, but to be unable to touch the slender form driving steadily into him was maddening — and perversely arousing. He groaned. Alec, with something very much like a sob, responded by grasping Seregil’s knees and pushing them backward and pressing forward, rocking himself deeper into Seregil. The head of his cock struck _that_ spot, and again, and again, while his smooth, flat belly slid back and forth over Seregil’s cock.

Seregil was moaning softly, a stream of sound in which occasionally surfaced words like _Alec_ or _talí_ or graphic, intimate things in Aurënfaie. Alec uttered choked cries, Seregil’s name, once or twice a Skalan obscenity; the Northern accent that had softened into a lilt over the last few years was sharp again on his lips.

And then suddenly he was gasping hard, every breath labored, his hips working furiously and almost involuntarily. Just the sight of his face contorting, eyes tightly shut — _oh, Illior,_ he was going to pull Seregil right over the edge along with him.

“Alec.” There was no more voice to Seregil’s whisper than to the rustle of leaves in wind. “Open your eyes. Look at me.”

Barely any blue was left in Alec’s eyes. They focused hazily on Seregil’s, possibly not seeing him at all, possibly seeing every secret he kept, possibly both at once.

“I more than simply love you.” Seregil spoke a shade above a whisper now, his voice low, soft, and unwavering. “I am bound to you. As long as you will have me, I will never leave you… _talímenios_.”

With a cry of abandon Alec fell on him, mouth wild against his, less kissing than seeking rough, unthinking union. He thrust once more, the collision of their hipbones jarring, and thrust again. The third time his entire body shuddered, and in release he moaned, the pitch high and the timbre mad, against Seregil’s lips.

Imagining his lover coming inside him had been nothing compared with seeing it happen, feeling it happen. Seregil’s cry echoed Alec’s as climax tore through him, scalding and spasmodic. The room around them dissolved into a soft, white otherwhere containing nothing but him and Alec, their breaths shaking and their pulses racing, and the third heart of the _talímenios_ beating in every artery and vein.

Some time later, either minutes or eons, he felt cool air on his torso as Alec levered himself up off him, the palm of his left hand flat against the mattress, and reached out with his right. Seregil didn’t register anything but the loss of contact, which he felt keenly, until he felt the cool blunt edge of a dagger against the inside of his left wrist and heard the _snick_ of a blade through rope.

Alec, straddling him, cut the other rope and lay the dagger back onto the crate. Then he picked up Seregil’s left hand and began to chafe it gently. Seregil gently pushed Alec’s hands away. “I’m fine, _talí_. They’re not numb.”

“They’re abraded,” Alec said with concern.

“Not badly. The marks will disappear after a few days.”

“The voice of experience?” Alec’s eyes, their pupils now somewhat diminished, were glinting.

“That’s one way to put it. In any case I can think of things my hands would enjoy right now more than being chafed.”

A soft breath of barely-laughter. “Give me a moment. We should clean up a bit first.” Alec smoothly dismounted him and stepped from the bed. Seregil turned his head to watch the graceful shape of him in the guttering firelight as he knelt to retrieve the linen from the floor. Its rough, cold, damp swipes weren’t especially pleasant against sensitized skin, but the alternative was even less appealing.

Alec wadded up the linen and tossed it back onto the floor. Then he fit himself to Seregil again, one arm flung over his chest, the hand of the other in his hair, cheek against cheek. Seregil turned on his side in Alec’s arms, and Alec readjusted himself against him.

After a moment, Seregil began to let his free hand wander. Over the shoulders and upper arm that had broadened considerably with labor, over the gracefully hollowed back, down one narrow hip. He watched Alec’s face carefully as he continued downward, cupping a hard, round buttock, smoothing his fingers into the cleft.

“Mm.” Alec’s eyes were closed; his body against Seregil’s felt loose and soft. Encouraged, Seregil insinuated his hand between the two of them, then between Alec’s thighs. This elicited another sigh; then, when Seregil’s fingers stroked along Alec’s quiescent cock, a soft half-noise of pleasure and a distinct twitch.

“Oversensitive, _talí_?”

“A little. More that it wouldn’t take much for you to get me hard again,” Alec murmured.

“Ah, youth.” Seregil withdrew his hand, wrapped it around Alec’s hip, and pulled him closer. “But you do realize, don’t you, what just happened?”

After a few beats of silence, Alec said softly, “I do. Or, rather, what _didn’t_ just happen.”

They lay quietly for a bit longer, idly stroking one another’s backs. _Talímenios_ did not gift lovers with the literal mind-reading abilities of wizards, but Seregil could feel Alec’s mind working, rather than merely sense it. Unwilling to intrude, he said nothing, merely waited until Alec had clearly given up worrying at one particular thought and was content to simply lie against him.

“Do you think…” He began the question hesitantly, let it trail off. His meaning was obvious enough.

Alec released a breath, softer than any sigh. “I do,” he repeated. “I’m not completely sure I’m healed for good. I know no way to be sure of that. But… something changed tonight. More than just the strengthened _talímenios_. Or maybe that’s what caused the change.” He paused. “Or maybe what you said to me, when I…” He fell silent. Seregil could feel the heat of the boy’s face against his own.

“I meant that, Alec,” he whispered. “All of it.”

“I know.” Alec’s fingers tightened on his waist. “And I knew it to be true, even before you said it aloud. But I’ve wondered from time to time over the last year whether… whether you were tiring of a lover you couldn’t even touch, and who couldn’t touch you.”

Indignation flashed hot throughout Seregil, but he suppressed it immediately. Had their plights been reversed, he knew, he’d have wondered the same. Oh, Bilairy’s Balls, he _knew_ he’d have abjectly begged Alec to leave him and find someone else, someone less broken. And quite possibly have driven Alec to do so.

“What you said to me…” Alec whispered. “I could have said precisely the same words to you.” He paused again. “Maybe I will… when we…” His voice faltered.

Seregil chuckled. “Your blush is going to burn a hole in my face, _talí_.”

“You’re not helping by calling attention to it,” Alec retorted.

“Did I _say_ I was trying to help in that regard? If I’ve never told you before I’ll tell you now: You’re beautiful and alluring no matter what you’re doing, but you’re incredibly, almost insanely, appealing when your cheeks are as red as an apple.” He took Alec’s chin in his hand and plied him with another kiss, soft and deep, until the boy made a hum of desire in his throat and shifted to press his newly revived cock against Seregil’s thigh.

“There’s still plenty of oil left,” Alec whispered at his ear. “Before we sleep tonight, I want to say the same words to you, at the very same moment.”

The sweetness of the sentiment and, yes, the flicker of arousal weren’t quite enough to overcome the fear of being unable to walk straight the next day. “Illior’s Fingers, Alec, be merciful! I’m not eighteen anymore!”

Alec’s fingertips were suddenly slipping along his inner thigh, then curling around his cock. “Didn’t you once tell me that an Aurënfaie of sixty years is not so much different in many ways from a Tirfaie of eighteen?”

“‘Many ways’ isn’t the same as ‘all ways,’ _ta_ — oh. _Oh._ ”

He could feel the curve of a smile pressing into his cheek. “You were saying?” Alec’s clever, deft fingers remained busy. “I shouldn’t want to interrupt you.”

“You can—” Seregil was finding his breath a bit difficult to catch. “—interrupt me as much as you like, _talí_. Every day—” He gasped sharply. Alec was nothing if not, in all things, a fast learner. “—every night. For the next few hundred years.”


End file.
